Since I have begun to make my
definitions without a too strict adherence to the letter, a man may be called
"happy" who, thanks to reason, has ceased either to hope or to fear.
But rocks also feel neither fear nor sadness, nor do cattle, yet no one would
call those things happy which cannot comprehend what happiness is.
With them you may class men whose dull
nature and want of self-knowledge reduces them to the level of cattle, mere
animals. There is no difference between the one and the other, because the
latter have no reason, while the former have only a corrupted form of it,
crooked and cunning to their own hurt. . . .
—Seneca
the Younger, On the happy life,
Chapter 5 (tr Stewart)
A rock
has a body, like a man, but the body of a rock has no life, no feeling, and no
thought. An animal has a body with life and with feeling, like a man, but the
life and feeling of an animal is not ordered and guided by understanding.
Now the
rock or the beast are hardly flawed in their lack of feeling or understanding,
because the presence of awareness or mind is not a part of their natures. We
should consider something deficient not when any characteristic is absent, but
when a characteristic is absent that rightly ought to be present. A rock and an
animal are not made to think, and we do not blame them when they fail to do so.
A human being, on the other hand, chooses to cast away his very identity when
he chooses not to think.
I must
remember, therefore, that the happy life, where I am no longer troubled by hope
or by fear, does not proceed from not thinking about hopes and fears, but comes
rather from understanding them rightly, and no longer allowing myself to be
ruled by them. Once I know what is good for me, I will no longer be burdened by
hope for the things beyond my power, and once I know what is bad for me, I will
no longer be burdened by fear of the things beyond my power. I have become
impervious to both, because I care for neither.
While
the rock or the animal simply cannot think at all, a thoughtless man is still
able to think, but neglects or perverts that power. I see all the injustice and
hurt around me, each and every day, that follows from failing to reflect upon
the meaning and purpose of our actions. I am myself delinquent, however, if my judgment
is itself condescending or dismissive, because I can be well aware of how and
why I have been thoughtless myself. It is indeed wrong for us to be thoughtless,
but it is also right for us to then correct this by perceiving the causes.
I have
been thoughtless when I have cared for myself at the expense of others. I
partly recognize my own worth, but I have divorced it from the good of the
whole, and I have removed my nature from all of Nature.
I have
been thoughtless when I have defined myself by all the circumstances around me,
and not by my own choices and actions. I have placed good and evil in
everything on the outside, and I have conversely neglected to respect myself.
I have
been thoughtless when I have grown tired of effort, disappointment, or loss,
and I choose to simply shut myself down. When feeling and thinking seem to
hurt, it may appear that it is best not to feel or think at all.
In
whatever way my decision has been disordered, by dismissing others, by
dismissing myself, or by dismissing both myself and others, I have abandoned a
necessary reflection on who I am, and why I am here. This is the greatest of
all human losses, because it is the loss of humanity itself.
When I
am no longer thinking about how I am living, there is no longer any worth in
living. It is only the recovery of consciousness that will restore life.
Written in 6/2009
Image: Didacus Valades, "The Great Chain of Being", from Rhetorica Christiana (1579)
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